A Radiant Fire Emblem Heroes update

As I’ve come to find, there’s never a better opportunity to be productive with some Fire Emblem than when you’re just sitting around biding time.

Unlike most of my Heroes update posts, this one is not being written during the witching hours between midnight and 3 a.m. Though it feels a little wrong in that sense and the post itself won’t go out at my usual early-ish morning time, I can’t really complain about feeling a little bit more well-rested as I talk about these new heroes:

It seems a bit strange that a more substantial update like this got a banner with only three heroes, but from the perspective of trying to summon them all I suppose it’s hard to argue with a little more ease in that department.

I’m sure I’ve brought this up in the past, but the Radiant games (Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance respectively) are part of the legendary RPG series’ history that I personally haven’t touched. While I don’t really have much of a personal connection with the three new heroes that were added as a result, I do still have some first impressions I can give.

Princess and, from what I understand, later queen of Crimea. Elincia is a Pegasus knight who uses a sword called Amiti that reduces her speed in exchange for attacking twice when she initiates combat (though with less of a reduction than an average brave weapon). She has Ardent Sacrifice as a passive skill to heal her allies, Death Blow to boost her attack by 6 as a way of making up for her sword’s low base power and a new skill called Flier Formation which seems to work like a reverse of Tana’s skill, allowing her to teleport to nearby flying units.

A cavalier from Crimea who joined Ike’s Greil Mercenaries and is apparently known for his speed. Out of everyone here, I would argue Oscar carries the least amount go gravitas in terms of what he gets out of the box. A Sapphire Lance makes him capable enough as a weapon-triangle abuser, he can grant +3 speed and defense with his assist ability, he has Lancebreaker to combat other lance users and he grants an extra passive +3 Speed and Defense boost to adjacent units during combat. An interesting and worthy set of buffs, but nothing that seems too mind-blowing.

Coming in with arguably the strangest name of the bunch is Nephenee, a commoner from Crimea who still seems to carry somewhat of a drawl from her native home despite trying her best to talk more in-line with the royalty under which she serves. As an infantry unit, Nephenee comes with a Slaying Lance to lower the special cooldown of her Moonbow special attack (quite the deadly combination, I might add), a +2 attack/speed boost and a new skill called Wrath that accelerates special cooldown more and boosts the power of a special attack when she’s below 75% health. If her stat spread is good, she’s probably going to have incredible damage output.

Elincia has stood out to me most thus far, as a sword-wielding Pegasus knight is something I’m still looking to add to my flying unit team alongside Minerva and Cordelia. Plus it’s cute that her Pegasus has a unicorn horn, and I’m always a sucker for cute design choices.

The game seems to have had other plans for me, however. While my free summon was a four-star Palla (Also known as not the sword user Pegasus knight I wanted), I decided to use a couple of extra orbs considering the Tempest Trials Mini and other daily events have given me a 100+ orb surplus.

Then this happened:

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This craziness was enough to outright blow me away when it happened. It kind of said to me that somebody somewhere is looking out to prove that games can be nice to their players. Once in a while, at least.

Seriously, three five stars in general at once is insane, but having Innes from the Sacred Stones banner and Nephenee from the new Path of Radiance banner show up for me is all kinds of extra nuts just from being so recently relevant.

Sure, it’ll be a bit of a slog to raise all three of them up to their full glory, but in the end I’m sure it will be a worth-while venture. The more good five stars I have, the easier it becomes to tackle things with continuous fights under changing conditions like the Arena Assault game.

With that slight bit of self-serving feel-goodness out of the way, let’s get into the nitty gritty of what we got to surround this new summoning focus banner.

The Radiant series seems to be an ever-popular one in the Fire Emblem fandom, and Heroes has no qualms about using that popularity to push bigger elements in its ever evolving story by the looks of it.

The Dauntless Crimeans came alongside a new main story chapter, one with five missions and plenty of actually engaging plot.

Of course a new story mission also means a host of other goodies, like extra orb missions and daily log-in bonuses:

But I would honestly argue that the plot for the “Diabolical Bloodline” chapter is really what should be drawing you in… If you’re into the plot of Fire Emblem Heroes like I am, at least.

Although, spoiler alert, this part of the plot has literally nothing to do with the new heroes despite taking place in their world. Just as a forewarning for anyone who was hoping to see the three newbies in their natural habitats.

This leg of the story begins fresh off the heels of Chapters 11 and 12 leading you through the world of Fire Emblem Echoes and culminating in the reveal that one of the archvillains, Prince Bruno, is actually the Order of Heroes’ missing friend Zacharias.

Pretty much right off the bat things jump into a hefty amount of exposition and backstory on Zacharias. It’s a lot all at once, arguably even overwhelmingly so from the way it comes out of nowhere, but at the same time it’s a very… Expected Fire Emblem backstory.

Evil dragons, harsh royal blood, puppet curses… Everything you’d expect to see in the plot of a Fire Emblem game. A safe choice in that respect, though they do go more personal with it.

I would say adding the details about his mother is just the kind of unexpected emotional whammy needed to build up some sympathy and intrigue in the character.

Beyond that, however, this chapter doesn’t offer much in terms of plot. Like I said before the three focus heroes show up as set pieces, but not a single one of them gets a line of dialogue. Not even the usual generic affair about there being a contract they need to follow.

I would say that’s the strangest part of this whole chapter, the general lack of use of other characters despite there being at least 5 missions to introduce Zacharias’ backstory and maybe even elaborate more on why the World of Radiance seems to be a favorite spot for him.

Though I could also argue that’s asking a lot for the plot of a mobile game that only periodically updates… So I digress.

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The five missions in Chapter 13 weren’t necessarily all that engaging to me considering I haven’t spent any time in the world of the original games. Nothing stood out too specifically about the backgrounds or the music as a result, though I do enjoy the world theme for the levels.

I did also find it interesting to note that Chapter 13-5 uses Brave Ike rather than normal Ike. Can’t help but wonder whether that means Brave Ike ties in more with Path of Radiance, or if they simply wanted to shake things up considering the new summoning focus had no axe-wielders.

However, arguably Chapter 13-3 took the cake as being the most interesting of the five. It was the only level to include a “survive 7 turns” stipulation, but rather than just forcing you to take on an onslaught of generic enemies, the level actually introduced a brand new character into the mix:

Not only does the Black Knight look dope as hell, but his appearance adds an interesting element to the fight. He’s invincible thanks to the special Emblia’s Ward ability and rather high leveled even on the most basic difficulty setting, so the character acts like a check for being able to blow through the mission like it’s nothing.

Plus, it more or less tells us everything we need to know about Black Knight before he appears in some sort of Grand Hero Battle later on. A sword with distant counter, a more powerful version of the Luna special attack, a defense boost when he’s attacked and Wings of Mercy to jump to an ally when they’re damaged… I can already tell this guy is going to be pretty powerful, especially on my armor team with Amelia.

Even with that diversion out of the way, however, things quickly jump back into Zacharias and his own emotional dark god blood angst.

Defeat him here and you get to go into some conclusive details with him somewhat making up with the Order of Heroes but knowing he can’t come back because blah blah story continuity and necessary villain being necessary.

And, of course, things end off with a message for the player.

Pretty standard roll-credits stuff here, not gunna lie. Fairly well handled considering how long we’ve been invested in these characters now, but nothing Pulitzer Prize winning by any means.

Now we wait and see where things go next.

Well, looks like that about wraps things up for today’s Fire Emblem Heroes update. Just in time to make my video conference in a half hour too, conventionally enough.

What do you think about the new Crimean heroes? Do you have a favorite? I certainly like Elincia best from a design perspective, but Nephenee seems pretty powerful and I’m looking forward to trying her out.

How about the continually growing Heroes story arc? Do you enjoy what they’ve been doing with it? Or would you be equally as content if everything was more filler-based considering the nature of the mobile title?